


The Story of Nox

by Olligreen



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: 5e, Changelings, D&D, D&D Backstory, D&D Character, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Dungeons & Dragons, Gen, Psychosis, Schizophrenia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2020-02-04 12:42:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18604756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Olligreen/pseuds/Olligreen
Summary: An Elf girl named Esmeralda is more than what she seems.





	The Story of Nox

**Author's Note:**

> !!THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW!!  
> This was written mostly for other people in my group, so some things that they already know are explained poorly or talked about vaguely. Here are the basics about the character so you won't be lost:
> 
> The main character's name is Nox, who is a changeling. She was born to an Elven nobleman by mistake, as a doppelganger disguised itself as his wife. Nox was thrown out and forgotten, to eventually be retrieved by a group of changelings in the elven city who use a very exclusive craftsman's guild as a cover. As she grew up, she developed Dissociative Identity Disorder, which was only made more complicated due to her ability to change forms. Esmeralda is one of her alters, as is Nomyna (The voice who speaks to Esmeralda in her mind). A homebrewed debuff that changelings have in this world is that anti-magic fields revert them back to their natural form. And that's all you need to know! Let me know if anything else needs to be cleared up in the comments. I hope you enjoy!

Wind swept across the village streets, carrying with it a wall of warmth accompanied by the familiar scent of brimstone. The sensation was calming to the young Elf as she made her daily trip to the forge. She was being watched, but this was only ordinary. One of the staring eyes gave her a charming glance, but they were only rewarded with silence, flirtatious words turning to mist in the breeze. He could never know what she knew, and so she didn’t consider him to exist; however, there was a woman on the corner who did quickly catch the Elf’s eye. She wore black lace and made dealings with the foolish men that shambled from the inn. A subtle glint in her eye showed that she wasn’t entirely as she seemed. The two women exchanged looks for a moment, made an unspoken pact then continued on their paths.

A human man stumbled through the door of the blacksmith shop, his hands piled with bits of metal, many of which were much heavier than a man his age should be carrying, “Ah, Esme, if you could--”

The Elf rushed to him, relieving him of some of the weight. “Apologies, sir.”

“Enough with the formalities, Esmeralda.” He grunted, letting the metals spill into a wooden bin.

She did the same, then nodded robotically. “Yes, Mister El-Satter.”

Jin simply sighed, wiping the sweat from his brow, then thanked her with a half-hearted smile. “You’re a good kid, Esme.” He grabbed a small rod of iron with a set of tongs and began to heat it. The two watched the metal in silence, their faces glowing softly in the orange light.

When Esmeralda’s eyes grew tired of the flames, they focused downward to a blade hanging from Jin’s hip. She studied the thing, entranced by it. The blade was curved, stretching like a ribbon to a sharpened point at the front along with a dull one on the side. “What’s this type called?”

Jin’s eyes cautiously moved to hers for a moment, then back to the flames. “The sword, you mean?” He seemed to dread these words as if he were starting something he couldn’t finish.

“Mhm.”

“It’s called a Scimitar.” He removed the iron from the forge then set it carefully onto the anvil, setting it up to be worked on.

Esmeralda hummed, and repeated the word, imitating his accent, and with a chuckle, he began flattening the iron with a hammer.

He worked the small rod into a hunting knife, all the while Esmeralda would occasionally fetch some towels, water, or the like, pestering the smith with questions upon questions about the blade on his hip. After extorting a poorly researched history of the Scimitar, she asked one final question.

“And Mister…”

Jin sighed then composed himself. “Yes, Esme.”

“When will our training continue?”

He pondered for a moment, caught off guard by the change in topic, then began to speak. “I--”

“Because it’s been weeks, sir, and I’ve really been getting better with the dagger.” She interrupted, her tone shifting to be slightly more aggressive.

“I know, I know, Esme, but the work--”

Esmeralda sighed loudly. “I know the work tires you, but you only have to sit there and teach. We don’t even have to spar!”

“Even that, Esme--”

“We can’t be waiting this long!”

“Why do you have to be so stubborn about this?”

“Because one of these days someone’s gonna come here with the intent to steal or to kill, and I won't be able to protect you!”

Jin paused, looking up at her in shock. “Esmeralda, I don’t need protecting!”

“There are people out there that will--!”

“I’m fine, Esmeralda! Your worrying is for nothing!”

“But you’re not, Jin. You’re--!”

“Are you trying to say I can’t handle myself?! I’m old, but I’m not useless!”

“You don’t get it! I can’t--...!” She bit her tongue. Her eyes wincing with remorse. She sighed, letting the air lose some of its thickness. “There are things you don’t understand.” She whispered, her eyes shut tightly to keep herself from looking him in the eye.

Jin simply scowled. “I understand perfectly fine.”

“But--!”

“Go home, Esme. There’ll be no training today.”

“I’m not--!”

“Go! Now!” Esmeralda drew a long, difficult breath then went on her way.

The walk from the forge to the guild hall wasn’t usually this harrowing a trek. With every step, her mind seemed to fall into a new level of paranoia. Jin was the only solid she spent any substantial amount of time with, and so it was only logical that he’d eventually find out that she wasn’t quite who she said she is. But how? Perhaps he was right. Maybe she was worrying about nothing, just manufacturing some conflict in this boring life she led. Regardless, the constant dread of the conflict ate away at her, gripping onto her chest and draining her. It was a horrible feeling, and one she didn’t expect to go away for some time.

“Oh, Esmeralda!” A woman’s voice called from before her.

She had been shoegazing the entire way and nearly slammed directly into another Elf, a friend of hers. “Greetings, Freya,” Esme said quietly, forcing a soft smile onto her face.

Freya was none the wiser, a slight hollowness in her eyes showing that she wasn’t wise to much at all. She was a loyal customer of Jin’s, commissioning rings and all sorts of jewelry, some of which use metals he could never hope to purchase for himself in his lifetime. She was the daughter of a nobleman, a man Esmeralda couldn’t bear to speak of. Completely oblivious, as she often was, Freya smiled at her sister. “I meant to tell you! I went to this fabulous ball the other night, and--”

 _“Absolutely dreadful. I hate this one.”_ A voice spat from inside Esmeralda’s mind. She tried to tune it out, but it was unrelenting. _“You know she only gives the old man her money because it’s amusing to her. Oh! Look at the silly human trying to blacksmith! How quaint! Watch how fast he dies!”_

Esmeralda took a deep breath, clenching her fists.

“--And he gave me this look, like, what a handsome gentleman! Anyway, next thing you know--”

“ _Solids. Why do you even bother with them? And a noble, too! Absolutely appalling. She has no idea who you are, Nox. She’s an idiot.”_

She nodded along, pretending to listen, her smile becoming more forced and stressed by the second.

“Esmeralda, are you alright?” The speaking stopped suddenly, giving Esmeralda time to notice her fists had clenched hard enough to split stone, her eyes shut tight like she was bracing for something. She relaxed as much as she could, then sighed. “Sorry, I just--... I’ve had a rather awful afternoon.”

Freya frowned, tilting her head to the side. “Oh, I’m sorry, darling.” Then suddenly, her face lit up once again. “Oh! I know! There’s this northern elf, one of those tan, handsome ones! He’s doing all sorts of magical tricks this evening in the gathering tent.” Without waiting for a response, she grabbed her sister’s hand, running off toward a worn blue tent in distance. “Come on! He’s starting soon!”

She dug in her heels at first, then decided to go with it. She did need something to distract her at the moment for a multitude of reasons.

The two entered the tent, finding a seat on a row of strung-together reed piles. As she sat down, Esmeralda noticed a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach and a tingling in her skin. It was as if the surface of her flesh was bubbling, but she couldn’t see it. She wrote it off as nerves from the day’s previous events and moved on to observing the room. It was overfilled with elves, mostly young women, giggling and gossiping. In the front, a dark-skinned elf was chatting with one of these women, a cheeky grin spread across his face as they cantered on about something rather. What they were saying was unintelligible due to the chatter of the crowd, but its meaninglessness could easily be assumed.

“You know, I heard,” Freya started, immediately invalidating her following statement, “Those northern elves actually have gills that they hide under their clothing.”

Esmeralda stifled a laugh. “Interesting theory.”

“But wouldn’t it make sense!?” She defended, “Why else would they live on the water like that?!”

“Perhaps because they enjoy it?”

“Oh, come on now, Esmeralda!”

The two laughed, and the crowd’s noise turned to a soft murmur.

The woman at the stage sat in the front row, watching carefully as the strange elf set up his act. He stood with his feet firmly planted, a confident expression on his face as he picked a feather up from a table beside him. He showed it to the crowd as if it were some foreign artifact. Then, he thrust it up into the air, and, with a puff of smoke, it turned to a living white dove, fluttering about and cooing. The audience applauded, whispering to each other with faces of amazement.

_“Illusion magic. Dumbasses.”_

The bird landed on the shoulder of the woman at the front, and the crowd leapt into another applause.

_“And she’s in on it. For Lolth’s sake, just use your heads, people.”_

“That’s not the point,” Esmeralda whispered to herself.

“What’s that?” Freya chimed in.

“Erh, nothing.”

Esmeralda’s stomach turned again. Something seemed off about this place.

The dove flew on to the man’s hand and he placed it carefully into a cage, which he then set aside to move on to his next charade. He raised a hand and a pebble levitated up from the floor on to his palm. His hand swung around gently as if blown by a gust of wind, then clenched tightly. The pebble crunched, then fell out in a mist as his hand slowly opened. After the dust dispersed, his fingers began to turn to stone, spreading like a sickness up his forearm. As the stone flesh reached his shoulder, the crowd roared with applause.

_“Oh please. The solid thinks he’s high and mighty for changing his skin? What an idiot.”_

As the women began to quiet, his arm twitched, mimicking the sound of cracking stone. After a moment the whole arm joined in on the movement, bending and breaking, revealing the magician’s skin beneath the rock until the whole of it fell off in chunks and powder.

“You’ve all been a wonderful audience, my darlings.” He said in a charming voice, sending a wink into the crowd. “And, just for you, I’m going to do something very special.”

_“No way he doesn’t do this every single show.”_

“For this trick, I’ll use no magic at all. Just my hands and my wits.”

_“Sure you will.”_

“And if you don’t believe me…” He pulled a small object out of his pocket. It was a tiny black box, covered in all sorts of carvings, lined at the edges with a golden trim. Esmeralda recognized it immediately. This is what had been making her feel ill. She stood, ready to sprint out of the tent, but by the time she had made her first step, it was too late.

The man whispered a word to the box and pain struck Esmeralda like she’d been trampled. Her heart began to beat like mad, her skin boiled and she felt her throat burn as vomit traveled toward her mouth. The shock tripped her, sending her onto the dirt. She looked up at her hand, which had turned sickly white, then a chorus of shrieks rang out.

_“FUCKING RUN!”_

She followed orders, jumping up to her feet and sprinting out of the tent. Outside were a few guards coming to investigate the noise. Their eyes went wide, one of them utterly frozen; however, the others readied their weapons, closing in on what used to be Esmeralda. She ran as quickly as she could and the guards made chase. Her heart consumed her entire hearing as she jumped into the thick brush of the woods. She took a moment to catch her breath, inching her way through thorns and shrubbery to make it to a safe place. Once unseen, simply by nature, she shifted back into her normal form, then crawled her way back toward town.

She stayed in the brush for a while, listening intently for a footstep or a whizzing arrow. She followed the hollow sound of chaos to make her way to the edge of the forest, her mind dizzied from what could be nerves or some natural poison she crawled into. She came to the forest’s edge and watched. A ways away there were a group of guards and a few women talking, perhaps giving their testimony. One of the women was Freya, sobbing, talking with her hands, absolutely overwhelmed. She wanted to talk to her, to console her, to tell her that she wasn’t the monster she appeared to be, but there was no way of doing that.

“Hey!” A voice erupted from above, and a hand was slapped onto her back.

Her heart turned to ice. This was the end. She could feel the rope around her neck, saw her feet turning to molten bone before her eyes. The voice spoke up again, a bit more softly this time.

“Esme, what’re you doing in there? You’ll get yourself caught.”

“Jin?” She said, the name thawing her heart.

He sighed, then lifted his hand. “You’re wasting time, Esme, you have to run. Do you understand?”

“I--”

“Go now. Not another word.”

She bit her tongue, glancing up at the man one last time. He was frowning in the way he often did, his eyes shifting nervously between her and the guards. Other than this motion he seemed perfectly calm, perfectly assured in his actions. What sort of strange man would help a monster?

After a moment, he simply just shoved her further into the brush. “Go!”

She took a long, difficult breath, then sprinted out, never taking another look back.


End file.
